Ex-airline manager tied to 9/11 sentenced in child-sex case

A former American Airlines operations manager who learned of the first Sept. 11 hijacking before the jet struck the World Trade Center has been sentenced to 10 years in prison on a federal interstate child-sex charge in Pittsburgh.

Ray Howland, of Arlington, Texas, pleaded guilty in June in federal court. He also was ordered Wednesday to spend 10 years on probation after he serves his sentence.

Howland was arrested near Pittsburgh International Airport in June 2015 by an undercover agent who posed online as a woman with a 10-year-old daughter who Howland arranged to meet for sex.

Howland received some of the first panicked calls from employees at Boston’s Logan Airport reporting the hijacking of an American Airlines flight that hijackers crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.